Chapter III: Part 3

It is true that each time that sanitary measures were relaxed by the authorities—such, for instance, as the perfect isolation of the patients—an increase in the number of lepers was noticeable. When this was observed the old-time ordinances were enforced again with vigor. It was thus in 1371 the Provost of Paris issued an edict enjoining all lepers to leave the Capital within fifteen days, under heavy corporal and pecuniary penalties; and in 1388, all lepers were forbidden to enter Paris without special permission; in 1402 this restriction was renewed, “under penalty of being taken by the executioner and his deputies and detained for a month on a diet of bread and water, and afterwards perpetual banishment from the kingdom.” Finally, in April, 1488, it was announced “all persons attacked by that abominable, very dangerous and contagious malady known as leprosy, must leave Paris before Easter and retire to their hospitals from the date of issuance of this edict, under penalty of imprisonment for a month on bread and water; and, where they had property, the sequestration of their houses and jewels and arbitrary corporal punishment; it was permitted them, however, to send things to them by servants, the latter being in health.”

We can understand from this how these poor wretches, at different epochs, were accused of horrible crimes, among other things poisoning rivers, wells, and fountains. As regards this accusation, says the author of the _Dictionnaire des Mœurs des Francais_, Philip le Long burned a certain number of these poor devils at the stake and confiscated their wealth, giving it to the Order of Malta and St. Lazare.

The historians and chronicalers of the eleventh and twelfth century often designated the person attacked by leprosy by the name of _mesel_, _mezel_, _meseau_ or _mesiaus_. Meantime Barbazin pretends that it is necessary to make a distinction.[29]

_Mesel_, according to Barbazin, was a person covered with sores and ulcers, while the leper was an insensible man. He thinks that _mesellerie_ was at its origin a different affection than leprosy, and that these two diseases have been wrongly confounded. “They have both served,” says he, “to designate a frightful disease, that is reputed the most dangerous of all maladies.”

As supporting this assertion of Barbazin, we have found in the Romanesque tongue some documents strongly confirming this point. They appear more interesting, inasmuch as they have heretofore been unknown to medical literature, as, for instance:

“Seneschal, I now demand of you, said he (Saint Louis), which you love better, whether you be _mesiaus_, or whether you commit a mortal sin; and I, who never have lied, responded that rather would I commit thirty mortal sins than be _mesiaus_.” (Joinville, _Histoire de Saint Louis_.)

The leprosy, however, was not an absolute cause for divorce, as we note in the following passage: “A man can leave his wife only for fornication, and not alone for leprosy, and lepers may marry; and one may cancel marriage if the husband become leper, and the same may be said of the bride.”

In the same manuscript another analogous fact shows the invalidation of the marital act for the reason of _mesellerie_ complicated by impotence or barrenness.

“A woman who through impotence has lost that which is necessary to her, so that he cannot cohabit with her, for the reason that he is _mesiaus_, may marry another, telling the latter, however, that the first she married was worth nothing, not even an infant, as he could not cohabit; that nothing can prevent cohabitation in marriage nor the begetting of children.”

Individuals attacked by _mesellerie_ were in reality outside the pale of the law. For we read in fact in the “_Coutume de Beauvoisis_, cap. 39,” that “_mesiaus_ must not be called on as witnesses, for custom accords them no place in the conversation of gentlemen.”

“The second reason is that when a _mesiaus_ calls on a healthy man, or when a healthy man calls on a _mesel_, the _mesiaus_ may put in the defense that he is beyond the reach of worldly law, and cannot be held responsible in such a case.”

These unfortunates besides could not inherit nor dispose of their own wealth during their lives. The following passage from the “ancient customs of Normandy” bears witness, _i. e._:

“The _mesel_ can be no man’s heir from the time his disease is developed, but he may have a life interest, as though he were not a _mesel_.”

The same as in many other diseases the leprosy presented itself under different forms and various degrees of gravity, as is proved from the following passage from _Le Pelerinage de l’humaine lignee_:

“Homs, qui ne scet bien discerner
Entre sante et maladie,
Entre le grant mesellerie
Entre le moienne et le meure.”

This gravity of different forms of leprosy has likewise been mentioned by the Arabian school, and notably by Avicenna, who had seen numerous cases complicated with ulcerations of the genital organs; also, by the Englishman, Gilbert, who wrote in the thirteenth century regarding the existence of several species of leprosy, which could not always be easily distinguished by reason of the uncertainty of their symptoms. As to its character as a constitutional malady we have the word of the Syrian Jaliah ebn Serapion, who attributes its connection to the predominance of certain humors; finally, Valescus of Tarentum insists on the heredity of the disease.

The leprosy, the pork measles and the _mesellerie_ were then only clinical forms of a single affection of a contagious nature—a hereditary disease whose symptoms appeared successively on the skin, in the mucous membranes, the viscera and in the nervous system. It then required a diathesis, which resembled greatly in its evolution that of syphilis, with which it has often been confounded.

The physicians of leper hospitals have left behind a great number of medical documents bearing on the characteristics of the disease, but their observations are so confused that we can only conclude that they considered all cutaneous maladies as belonging to the same constitutional vice.

They recognized, however, the _ladrerrie_ (disease arising from measly pork), by the following symptoms, the same being laid down by Guy de Chauliac:

“Eyelids and eyebrows swollen, falling of eye-lashes and eyebrows, which are replaced by a finer quality of hair; ulceration of septum of the nose, odor of ozoena, granulated tongue, fœtid breath, painful breathing, thickening and hardness of the lips, with fissures and lividity of same; gums tumefied and ulcerated; furfuraceous scales in the hair, purple face, fixed expression, hideous aspect; forehead smooth and shiny like a horn; pustules on face; veins on chest much developed; breasts hard.”

“Thinness of muscles of the hand, especially thumb and index finger; lividity and cracking of the nails; coldness of the extremities; presence of a serpiginous eruption; insensibility of the legs, collections of nodosities around the joints; under the influence of cold elevations appeared on the cutis, making it appear like goose-skin.”

“Sensation of pricking, ulcerations of skin; sleep uneasy, fetidity of sweat; feeble pulse, bad odor of blood, which is viscid and oily to the touch and gritty after incineration, likewise of a violet black color.”

The contagious characteristic of leprosy through sexual relation was noticed by physicians attached to hospitals, and was the subject of police restriction by public sanitary officers. Thus in the thirteenth century the celebrated Roger Bacon, surnamed the admirable doctor, wrote that commerce with a leprous woman could be followed by very serious consequences. This opinion was corroborated by a physician of the University of Oxford, his contemporary John of Gaddsen, and by the observations of Bernard Gordon, a celebrated practitioner of Montpellier. We all know the history of a Countess who came to be treated for leprosy at Montpellier, when a Bachelor in Medicine charged with the task of dressing her sores, fell desperately in love with the leper lady, and from his _amours_ contracted most serious cutaneous disease.

At this period the leprosy had already begun to assume a venereal type of marked character, and many prostitutes suffered from attacks. As we all are aware, Jean Manardi, an Italian doctor, has fully expressed his opinion on this subject. In a letter addressed to a friend, Michel Santana, one of the first specialists who treated pox, Manardi remarks: “This disease has attacked Valencia, in Spain, being spread broadcast by a famous courtesan, who, for the price of fifty crowns, accorded her favors to a nobleman suffering from leprosy. This woman having been tainted, in her turn contaminated all the young men who called on her, so that more than four hundred were affected in a brief space of time. Some of these, having followed the fortunes of King Charles into Italy, carried and spread this cruel malady in their track.”

Another Italian physician, Andre Mathiole, likewise shows the identity of leprosy with syphilis,—in the following terms: “Some authors have written that the French have taken this disease from impure commerce with leprous women while traversing the mountains of Italy.”[30]

We could easily multiply such citations to complete the facts observed by Fernel and Ambroise Pare in France, and also by many Italian physicians, from whence it would be easy to understand why Manardi came to the following conclusion: “Those who have connection with a woman who has had recent _amours_ with a leper, a courtesan in whose womb the seeds of disease may linger, sometimes contract leprosy and at other times suffer from other maladies of a more or less serious nature, according to their predispositions.”

This modification from _measles_ (the disease from corrupt pork diet) into leprosy of the venereal type is made progressively through the intermediary of the ordinary agencies of prostitution,—bawds and libertines,—who for a very long period eluded the wise laws ordained by sanitary police for the restriction of lepers. In 1543, the affection was so wide-spread as to be beyond sanitary control, and the edict of Francois I., re establishing leper hospitals, amounted to nothing. There were too many poxed people. The Hospital of Lourcine, which was specially devoted to these cases at Paris contained 600 patients in 1540, and in the wards of Trinity Hospital and the Hotel Dieu there were many more. It was the same in the Provinces, notably at Tolouse, which had the merit of creating the first venereal hospital ever instituted, under the Gascon name of “_Houspital das rognousez de la rougno de Naples_.” Finally, fifty years later, in 1606, for want of lepers, the leper asylums were officially closed. Henry IV., in a proclamation, gave those remaining “to poor gentlemen and crippled soldiers.”

Thus ended the epidemic of leprosy in France, which had prevailed from the second century, observing the same progress in other countries of Western Europe during the same period of time. Syphilis, the product of the venereal maladies of antiquity and the leprosy of the Middle Ages, announced a new era; syphilis was thus contemporaneous with the _Renaissance_.

In the collection of Guy Patin’s letters, there is an interesting document relating to the connection of leprosy and syphilis, as witness the principal passage:

“It was not long since that I saw in Auvergne a patient who was suspected of measles (_hog disease_), for the reason that his family had the reputation of being thus afflicted, though he bore on his body no marks of the disease. This led me to recall the fact that some families in Paris have been suspected of this taint; but really we have no measles or leprosy here. In former times there was a hospital dedicated to such cases in the Faubourg Saint Denis. I have noticed no cases in Champagne, Normandy nor Picardy, although in all these Provinces I found asylums formerly used for such cases that are now turned into hospitals for plague victims. In former times leprosy was confounded with pox, through the ignorance of doctors and the barbarity of the age; nevertheless, there are yet a few lepers in Provence, Languedoc and Poitou.”

We have here the authority of Guy Patin for saying that leprosy had almost entirely disappeared from France in the sixteenth century.

Although modern Faculties are prone to insist that the real science of medicine only dates back its origin to the discovery of the microscope, and that the study of antique medicine is only a retrospective exposition calculated to show the slight scientific value of ancient observations, I assert that the many observations recorded by our medical ancestors are of immense value. Let us cite, as a single instance, this transformation of a constitutional malady, attenuated by time, transmitted by heredity through the same masses of people for ten centuries,—populations having a similar diathesis,—a disease taking a new vigor and attacking other generations, but destined in a given time to disappear, most probably, in its turn, in another unknown metamorphosis. Such an idea may cause a smile in that haughty _section hors rang_ in medicine, which is so devoted to the culture of specific germs that but one idea can certainly be adopted as an irrefutable dogma in medicine—that is, if the facts it represents coincide with the modifications of the wag—in the tail end of a bacillus.

As for myself, I remain convinced that everything seen in modern times, through the objective even of an instrument of precision, cannot destroy the accumulated work of twenty centuries of medical observation and study.

_Scientiæ enim per additamenta fiunt._

THE SYPHILIS.

If the true syphilis—the variety that appeared in the fifteenth century—was unknown in the Middle Ages, there still exist documents which fully affirm the existence of contagious venereal diseases several hundreds of years before the Italian wars of Charles VIII. and Louis XII. The maladies which, in times of antiquity, afflicted the Hebrews and Romans, as a result of impure sexual commerce, are to-day only the results of the progress made by prostitution after the Crusades; that is to say, they are merely the products of debauchery and leprous virus imported from the Orient.

As early as the twelfth century France knew the _mal malin_ or _mal boubil_, an affection characterized by sores and ulcerations on the arms and genital organs. Gauthier de Coinci, Prior of the Abbey of St. Medard de Soissons, at the beginning of the thirteenth century considered these maladies as impure and contagious, and warned his priests in the following verselets:

“The monk, the church clerk and the priest
Must not defile themselves the least,
But with good conscience and pure heart
Keep their hands off from private part.
Pray God at morning and at night
To hide corruption from their sight;
The _mal boubil_ the _mal malan_
Comes ever to each sinning man.”

We are permitted to suppose from these lines that the disease was localized in “a wicked place that the hands must not touch,” and that it was only an affection of the same nature as the _gorre_ and _grand gorre_, one of the numerous expressions applied to all contagious maladies of the sexual organs. This fact cannot be contested, for at the same epoch, in a poem entitled “_Des XXIII Manieres de Vilains_,” we find an imprecation launched by this anonymous author against all blackguards and bawds:

“That they may be
Itchy, poxed, and apostumed,
Covered with ulcers, badly rheumed,
Full of fever, jaundice sapped,
That they may be, also, clapped.”

Or, as given in French:

“Qu ils aient ...
Rogne, variole et apostume,
Et si aient plente de grume,
Plente de fievre et de jaunisse,
Et si aient la chade-pisse”

Now, the opuscle, from which these verses are derived, was reprinted in 1833 by Francisque Michel, and is contemporaneous with the manuscripts of the thirteenth century, analyzed by M. Littre in _a note on syphilis_,[31] where our erudite author says: “At this epoch the venereal diseases had an analogous form to those we observe to-day.”

_This document dates back 200 years before the discovery of America_, and is duly authenticated by the testimony of Guillaume Saliceti, a physician and Italian priest of the thirteenth century. “When a man has received a corruption of the penis, after having cohabited with an obscene woman or for other cause, there comes a tumor in the groin.”[32] And some years after Lanfranc, a student of Salicetis, wrote, in his turn, in his _Parva Cyrurgia_, that “buboes appear following ulcers on the penis.” His description of chancres and other venereal accidents is very remarkable.

Another writer of the thirteenth century, Michel Scott, a Scotch physician, alchemist, and philosopher, who lived in France and Germany for many years, says in one of his numerous works:[33] “Women become livid and have discharges. If a woman is in such a condition and a man cohabit with her his penis is easily diseased, as we often see in adolescents who, ignorant of this fact, often contract a sore organ or are attacked by leprosy. It is also well to know that if a discharge exist at the epoch of conception, the fetus is more or less diseased, and in this case a man must abstain from all connection, and the woman should resist sexual advances, if she have foresight.”

This passage leaves no possible doubt as to the existence of blenorrhagia with the discharge and as to the presence of an hereditary syphilitic diathesis, for if the author gives the last-mentioned the name of leprosy it is only for the reason that at this period no positive term was in use to designate venereal diseases,[34] which were confounded with leprosy, with or without reason, the former only being, perhaps, a transformation of the latter.

About a century later, that is to say, on August 8th, 1347, Queen Jeanne of Naples, Countess of Provence, sent to Avignon the statutes relating to the establishment of houses of prostitution in that city. Article IV. of this law regulated police measures in the following terms: “The Queen ordains that every Saturday the bailiff and a barber deputed by the Councilmen shall visit every debauched girl in the place, and if they find any one who has the disease arising from venery, that such a one may be separated from the other girls and lodged apart, to the end that no one may have commerce with her, and that the young may thus avoid contracting disease.”[35]

These statutes were first made known by Astruc,[36] and have been inserted without reserve by Grisolle in his _Traite de Pathologie Interne_; also by Cazenave in his _Traite des Syphilides_; but Jules Courtet, and after him Rabutaux and Anglada, have considered these documents as somewhat apocryphal.

We shall not stop to discuss the authenticity of these documents; they have characteristics that make their genuineness almost indisputable. Besides, we can quote other authors against whom no arguments can be used; for instance, we will cite John of Gaddesen, a physician of the English Court, who affirmed that sexual connection with a leprous woman produced ulcers of the penis;[37] besides, his compatriot Gilbert, who described in his _Compendium Medicinal_, in the year 1300, the treatment of gonorrhœa and chancre so common after the Crusades; or Gui du Chauliac, who in 1360 noticed “the ulcers born of commerce with a tainted woman, impure and chancrous (_ex coitu cum fœtida vel immunda vel cancrosa muliere_).”[38] Again, note Torella, of Italy, who considered pox as a contagious malady which had existed from times of antiquity, and which had made its appearance at different epochs, but of which the symptoms, poorly understood by medical men, prevented isolation and its proper pathological identity.[39]

We need not reproduce the text of all the French and especially the Italian doctors, who established the identity of venereal diseases _before the year_ 1494—such writers as Montagnana, Petrus Pintor, Nicolas Leonicenus, Joseph Grunpeck, etc. As to these works, they have all been mentioned by Fracastor, in his celebrated _Treatise on Contagious Diseases_ (_de morbis contagiosis_), a work at once a fine poem, whose Latinity is perfect and a monograph of true scientific exactitude.

Fracastor described the patient as well as the disease: “The victims were sad and broken with pale faces.”

“They had chancres on their private parts; these chancres were changeable; when cured at one point they reappeared at another; they always broke out again.”

“Pustules with crusts were raised on the skin; in some these commence on the scalp first; this was the usual case; in a few they appeared elsewhere. At first these were small, afterwards increasing in size, appearing like unto the milk crust in children. In some these pustules were small and dry—in others large and humid. Sometimes they were scarlet, sometimes white, sometimes hard and pink. These pustules opened at the end of some days, pouring out an incredible quantity of stinking and nasty liquid, once opened they became true phagedenic ulcers, which not only consumed the flesh but even the bone.”

“Those whose upper regions were attacked had malignant fluxions, that eat away the palate, the trachea, the throat and the tonsils. Some patients lost their lips, others their noses, others their eyes, others their private parts.”

“Large gummy tumors appeared in many and disfigured the limbs. These growths were often the size of an egg or a French roll of bread. When opened these tumors discharged a whitish mucilaginous liquid. They were principally noted on the arms and legs; while ulcerating sometimes they grew callous, at other times remaining as tumors until death.”

“As if this were not sufficient, terrible pains oftimes attacked the limbs; these generally came when the pustules appeared. These pains were long abiding and well nigh insupportable, aching most at night, not only affecting the articulation, hut also the bones and nerves of the limbs. Sometimes the patient had pustules without pains, at other times pains without pustules; but the great majority had pustules and pains.”

“The patients were plunged into a condition of languor. They became thin, weak, without appetite, sleeping not, always sad and in a sullen humor, the face and the limbs swollen, with a slight fever at times. Some suffered with pains in the head, pains of long duration, which did not recede before any remedies.”

“Although the greater majority of mortals have taken this disease by contagion, it is no less certain that a great number of others contracted it from infection. It is impossible to believe, in fact, that in such a short time the contagion that marches so slowly by itself and which is communicated with such difficulty, should overrun such a number of countries, after having been (as it is claimed), imported by a single fleet of Spanish ships. For it is well known that its existence was determined in Spain, France, Italy and Germany and all through Scythia at the same period of time. Without doubt the malady originated spontaneously, like the petechial fever, or it had always existed.”

“A barber, my friend, has a very old manuscript, containing directions for the treatment of the affection. This has for its title: ‘_Medicine for the thick scabs, with pains in the joints._’ The barber remembered the remedy laid down in this work, and at the very commencement of the new malady thought he recognized the contagion by the name of the _thick_ scabs. But physicians having examined this remedy found it too violent, inasmuch as it was composed of quicksilver and sulphur. He would have been happier had he not consulted the doctors; he would have grown wealthy by incalculable gains.”

We see from this that the syphilis of the fifteenth century did not present precisely the same symptoms as the variety of to day. Formerly secondary and tertiary accidents supervened much more rapidly, besides being very violent in their manifestations. Besides the disease was exceedingly malignant often causing, death in a short time, which fact led many authors of that epoch to consider the symptoms due to a pestilence brought about by general causes.[40] Nicholas Massa wrote in fact, that: “The patient has pains in the head, arms, and especially the legs, which are always intensified at night. The buboes in the two groins are salutary when they suppurate. We observe a chafed and scaly condition of the palms of the hands and soles of the feet. Ulcers of a bad appearance are frequently noted on the penis; these ulcers are hard and callous and very slow in healing. In exploring the throat we often discover a relaxed condition of the uvula and the presence of sordid ulcers, which rarely suppurate. With all this eruptive process we note certain hard tumors that adhere to the skin and bone and bear the name of _gummata_. These tumors may ulcerate and produce osseous caries.”[41]

We notice the same errors in all the descriptions given by the authors of the sixteenth century; they exhibit an imperfect knowledge of the symptomatology, of the genesis and primitive constitutional accidents. We see that as yet clinical medicine had no existence, and that our predecessors were ignorant of the art of co-ordinating the signs of a disease in a thoughtful manner. Nevertheless, their descriptive powers in writing on venereal diseases, as before noted, were excellent, and had the merit of exactitude and honest observation; as, Pierre Manardi observes: “The principal sign of the French disease consists in pustules coming out on the end of the penis in men and at the entrance of vulva or neck of womb among women. Most frequently these pustules ulcerate; I say frequently for the reason that I have seen patients in whom these ulcers were hard as warts, cloves or apple seeds.”

Here we have the aspect of primary syphilis presented by a physician whose name will, with justice, remain attached to the disease as long as it has a history. The secondary symptoms of the malady have never been more dramatically pictured than by Fernel, who remarks: “They had horrible ulcers on them, which might be mistaken for glands, judging from size and color, from which issued a foul discharge of a villainous infecting kind, enough to give a heart-ache; they had long faces of a greenish-black complexion, so covered with sores that nothing more hideous could be imagined.”[42]

Relative to the duration of secondary symptoms, under date of 1495, Marcello de Cumes wrote from the camp of Novarro that “the pustules on the face, like those of leprosy and variola, lasted a year or more when the patient was not treated.”[43]

The physiognomy of the unfortunates whose faces were adorned with lumps and whose foreheads bore the sadly characteristic _corona veneris_, has been well described in the following verses by Jean Lemaire, of Belgium, a poet and historical writer of fifteenth century. The portrait is exact:

“But in the end, when the venom is ripe,
Sprout out big warts of a scarlet type,
Persistent, spreading over the face,
Leaving the brand of shame and disgrace,
An injury left after passion’s rude storm,
Fair human nature thus to deform.
High forehead, neck, round chin and nose
Many a warty sore disclose;
And the venom, with deadly pain,
Runs through the system in every vein,
Causing innumerable ailments, no doubt,
From itch to the ever-tormenting gout,” etc.

Meantime, the symptoms of syphilis were not long in losing some of their acute features. Already, in 1540, Antoine Lecocq noted this fact in France:[44] “Sometimes,” says he, “the virus seems to expend its strength on the groins in tumefaction of the glands; and, if this bubo suppurates, it is well. This tumor we call bubo; others call it _poulain_ (colt or filly) for mischief’s sake, as those who are thus attacked separate their legs while walking, horse style.” Fernel declared that the venereal disease at the end of the sixteenth century so little resembled that of his early days that he could scarcely believe it the same. He remarks: “This disease has lost much of its ferocity and acuteness.”

On his part, Fracastor remarked, in 1546, that “For six years past the malady has changed considerably. We now notice pustules on but few patients, and they have but few pains, and these are generally slight; but more gummy tumors are observed. A thing that astonishes the world is the falling out of the hair of the head and baldness in other portions of the body. It sometimes happens that in the worst cases the teeth become loose and even fall out.”[45]

These phenomena were evidently due to the action of mercurial ointment, which was much used in Italy from the time it was recommended by Hugo, of Boulogne, in the _malum mortuum_, or malignant leprosy of the Occident. In France guaiac was much used, or holy wood, which was then known as _sanctum lignum_, when only the Latin equivalent was in vogue. Besides, mention is made of mercurial stomatitis following inunctions with the so-called Neapolitain ointment in the Prologue of _Pantagruel_, by Rabelais.

This passage from Dr. Francis Rabelais[46] leads us to think that physicians were undecided about caring for syphilitic patients in the fifteenth century, almost all doctors, in fact, refusing to examine into the character of a disease of which they knew nothing; a disease whose infecting centers were the most degraded and ignoble public places; a malady not described in the works of Hippocrates nor Galen.

So, this _lues venerea_, as it is called by Fernel, made numerous victims in all countries. It spread in the towns and throughout the rural districts, and, at times, caused such ravages that, in the large cities, the authorities were obliged to use sanitary measures against the pox, as had been done at other times in the case of leprosy. Syphilitics were expelled from places and forbidden, under severe penalties, from having intercourse with healthy people. But it soon came to be known that contagion could only occur through sexual connection, and the patients then hid in hospitals, where they were specially treated by the methods laid down by the first syphilographers,—vapor baths, mercurial inunctions, frictions, etc. Unfortunately, no prophylactic measures were instituted against prostitutes, although they were recognized as having a monopoly in venereal disorders; for they did not believe at that time, like Jean de Lorme, who said: “The pox may be caught by touching an infected person; by breathing the same air; by stepping, barefooted, in the patient’s sputa, and in many other manners.”

Even the poets wrote sonnets, poems and ballads upon this _mal d’amour_ (lovesickness). One could form an immense volume by collecting all the verses written and published on this subject during the sixteenth century. But no poem indited during that period presents so great an interest to medical science as the ballad of Jean Droyn, of Amiens, dedicated to the Prince, in which the author, stronger in the etiology of syphilis than the doctors of his time, advised young men who feared _grosse verole_ (the pox) not to indulge in _liasons_ with girls of the town without first being satisfied with their pathological innocence.

This ballad was published at Lyons in 1512, that is to say, seventeen years after the appearance of the disease in the army of Charles VIII., at an epoch when the majority of doctors considered the affection as an infectious malady due to the action of a pestilential miasm in the air. We shall reproduce but a few lines of this poetical-medical-historical document:

“Perfumed darlings, dandies, dudes,
Take warning in each case,
Beware all types of fleshy nudes
And don’t fall in disgrace.

Sure, gentlemen and tradesmen gay
May throw away their money,
Give banquets and at gaming play,
As flies are drawn by honey.

I warn you all of love’s sweet charms,
Place on them protocole,
For haunting oft strange women’s arms
Brings sometimes _grosse verole_.

“Let love, with moderation wise,
Attend each amorous feast.
Let all be clean unto your eyes,
Fly all lewd girls at least.

Happier and nobler ’tis to gain
For virtue high renown
Than wound your honor with a stain,
With women of the town.

Keep out of danger from disease,
Good health will you console,
But if you strive the flesh to please
Beware of _grosse verole_.”

In the final stanzas of this poem, which will not bear a more complete reproduction owing to a maudlin sentimentality existing in modern times, we find that the Prophet Job is not regarded as strictly virtuous, for we read:

“Prince, sachez que Job fut vertueux,
Mais si futil rongneux et grateleux,
Nous lui prions qu’il nous garde et console,
Pour corriger mondains luxurieux,
S’est engendree ceste grosse verole.”

Notwithstanding the undoubted proof of the antiquity of venereal diseases, Astruc, as we all know, defends the American origin of the malady, and endeavors to support his views on the hypothesis emitted by Ulrich de Hutten in 1519, _i.e._, at the siege of Naples, at the end of 1494, a Spanish army commanded by Gonsalva of Cordova came to the rescue of the besieged. Their soldiers communicated to the girls of the town and the courtesans of the neighborhood the _maladie Americaine_ (American disease), which was contracted in turn, after the capture of Naples, by the army of King Charles, and afterwards spread throughout France. But history informs us that the King of France did not return to Paris with his troops from the Italian campaign until the month of March, 1496. Now it was on the 6th of March, in this same year, that Parliament issued a proclamation regulating the pox, in which the first section reads: “To-day, the 6th of March, whereas in the City of Paris a disease of a certain contagious character, known as _verole_ (pox), prevails, the which has made much progress in the Realm the past two years, as well at Paris as in other places, and there is reason to fear, this being Springtime, that it may increase, it is deemed expedient to take cognizance of the same.”

Other testimony is gathered from the narrative of the voyages of Christopher Columbus by his contemporary Petrus Martyr, of Anghierra, historian attached to the court of Ferdinand and Isabella. According to the notes given him by the great navigator on his return to Spain, authentic records kept from day to day,[47] the Spanish and Italian sailors of Columbus found “people who lived in the Age of Gold; with no ditches, no fences, no books, no laws. The men were entirely naked, the women only protected by a belly-band of light material; notwithstanding all this, their morals were pure.” Besides, Petrus Martyr (_La Syphilis au XV. Siecle_) proves there was syphilis in Spain in 1487.

When Columbus returned to Europe a second time he left behind him, under orders of his brother, a hundred of his companions in arms, who were a collection of adventurers from all the nations of the earth. These men committed all sorts of excesses among the unfortunate Indians—steeping themselves in lust and every manner of crime, violating the women, and indulging in wholesale debauchery. Says Charles Renaut: “Looking at matters from this standpoint, I am ready to believe that the Spaniards carried the disease to the natives of Hispanola, and that the latter did not give the malady to the Spanish.”

We shall not dwell further on the origin of syphilis, nor its connection with leprosy and other cutaneous maladies which were so prevalent in Europe throughout the Middle Ages. We may consider the disease as something new, and trace its period of invasion and development to the discovery of America, or assert that it arose from a semi extinct affection (leprosy), assuming a new type under the influence of a special epidemic constitution.

One thing is clearly proven, _i.e._, that syphilis was preceded by contagious venereal affections, which lost the irregular and malignant forms of the fifteenth century. When then the civilized nations of earth create a true Public Health Service, syphilis will be vanquished, and will pass away to the ranks of other extinct maladies.

THE DEMONOMANIA OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

ORIGIN OF MAGIC AND SORCERY

From the day that Louis XIV. dissolved the Parliament of Rouen, which had condemned several persons in the Province of Vire to death for the crime of sorcery, but few sorcerers have been seen in France.

It was in 1682 that Urbain Grandier was tortured and burned alive for having launched a malediction against the Ursulines of Loudun.

A violent reaction occurred against the Inquisitors, theologians, and their accomplice butchers, thanks to the courageous intervention of eminent philosophers and savants, who were justly indignant at the crimes of the Roman Catholic priesthood. This reaction clearly demonstrated the fact that the innumerable victims of religious intolerance in the Middle Ages were not sorcerers, nor possessed of the devil, nor minions of Hell. Psychologists and moralists claimed that the victims of these delusions were insane, persons suffering from semi delusions, subjects of monomania. Science classed these unfortunates into several groups, among which may be enumerated persons afflicted with hallucinations, demonomaniacs, erotomaniacs, subjects of lycanthropy, etc., without counting vampires, choreomaniacs, lypemaniacs, and others whose attacks are recognized by medical science.

The encyclopedists and their disciples declared themselves satisfied, inasmuch as psychological experts had done away with the absurd traditions of the Middle Ages as well as antique superstitions. The death penalty for demonidolatry was removed, but the doors of the insane asylum opened for its followers.

Could any better arrangement have been made at the present day? Let us take the history of this famous epidemic of demonidolatry of other days and examine the documentary evidence offered against those accused of the crime of sorcery, passing the testimony through the crucible of modern science, pathology, physiology, together with all observable symptoms, holding in view meanwhile modern neurological discoveries; let us strive, in a word, to solve this great psychological question, which has greatly agitated the human understanding for four hundred years past.

We believe _what is, is the truth_, and in order to best judge the facts narrated, it is well to first arrange our knowledge as to the psychological condition of Occidental populations during the Middle Ages, a condition that was only the continuation of the ideas and traditions of antiquity, modified by the fanatical prejudices of a new religion and by a cruel and barbarous social Constitution.

If history authorizes us, in fact, to conclude that the occult sciences have existed from the earliest periods of antiquity, that the people who brought learning from the Orient to the Occident, have at all times admitted the existence of genii, angels, and demons, it is easy to explain the action that such mysterious traditions would have on the ignorant minds of the peasantry of the Middle Ages, bowed under the yoke of slavery to feudal Lords and the clerical despotism of the Romish Church.

Let us interrogate these historical texts with impartiality, and analyze these ancient theogonies, which are, so to speak, the _proces verbaux_ of the philosophic development of the human mind, and we shall see whether we can admit that mental diseases may prevail _epidemically_ for several generations, like the pestilential maladies of the fourth century, for example.

We know that it was in India, the cradle of human genius, that the doctrine of supernaturalism, of good and bad spirits exerting an occult influence on mankind, was born. Ancient history shows such a belief goes back to antique times. Zoroaster, inspired by _Ahura Mazda_, the Omniscient, wrote, in the Zend Avesta, the text and commentaries of the religious law dedicated to the Aryas of India and Persia. This law had for its object the destruction of the cult of _dews_ or demons, who infested the earth under human forms, and also to repress the naturalistic instinct of the most ancient people of _Asia_, by initiating them in a faith for Celestial genii.

The disciples of Zoroaster were the _Magi_; that is to say, the learned men of the day, but they modified the doctrine of the Prophet, which the Guebres alone preserved in its purity, with the fundamental doctrine of the dualism of light and darkness, represented by _Ormazd_ and _Ahriman_, the spirit of the blest and the spirit of the damned.

The Chaldeans, celebrated from times of antiquity for their knowledge, not only of astronomy, but all other sciences, adopted the doctrines of the Zend-Avesta, and their Magi transmitted the same to the Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, and finally to the Gauls, whose adepts were the Druids.

The science or Magic of the Chaldeans was only magnetism, somnambulism, and spiritism.

Says M. F. Fabart: “The Magi, according to certain _bas reliefs_ exhumed in Oriental countries, knew the virtue of magnetic passes. We see figures with hands extended, influencing by their gestures the subjects, who, seated before them, have closed eyes.

“The Pythonesses and Sybills did not have the power of foresight until they had passed through the crisis of an artificial somnambulism, and we find passages in antique authorities where this imposed sleep is discussed.[48]

In one of my preceding works I have spoken of several very curious passages in the _Pharsalia_ of Lucan, where he speaks of the oracles of the female magician Erichto and the responses of the Pythonesses in the Temple of Delphi to the inquiries of Appius. Cassandra, priestess to Apollo in the tragedy of Agamemnon, by Seneca the tragedian, is a perfect type of the hypnotizable hysteric, and, if the poet does not describe the methods followed by the priests of the temple in order to magnetize their subjects, we find them noted by other Latin authors in terms so explicit as to leave no doubt as to their knowledge of magnetic passes (hypnotism).

Says Cœlius Aurelianus: “We make circular movements with the hands before the eyes of the patient. Under our gaze the subject follows the movements of our hands, the eyes blinking.” It is while giving the treatment for catalepsy that the Roman physician, the contemporary of Galen, initiates us in magnetic practice. After giving a description of the neurosis, which he characterizes by prostration, immobility, rigidity of neck, loss of voice, stupor of the senses, widely opened eyelids, fixity of the eyes and ocular expression, the Latin author teaches us how to relieve the disease and partially waken the movement, senses, and intelligence of the patient; and he magnetizes, as is clearly indicated in the following lines: “_Atque ita, si ante oculos eorum quisquam digitos circum moveat, palpebrant ægrotantes, et suo obtutu manuum trajectionem sequuntur; vel si quicquam profecerint etiam toto obtutu converso attendunt; et inclamati, respicientes lacrymantur nihil dicentes, sed volentium respondere vultum æmulantes_.”[49]

The precepts of Zoroaster were differently modified among ancient people. Moses, who wished the glory of being the great prophet of Israel, wrote the law of Jehovah and abjured the Magi, by whom he had been initiated. The Hebrews meantime preserved the Mazadean religion in memory; they created magic. Ahriman became Astaroth, Beelzebub, Asmodeus and other demons, who had for interpreters the Pythonesses and Prophetesses (_mediums_). Ormazd was transferred into a legion of angels and archangels, who appeared to men to make prophecies. Presently the Jewish magicians invented the _Kabbala_, occult science, by which, in pronouncing certain words, they performed miracles and submitted supernatural powers to the caprices of the human will; they were above all necromancers.

The occult sciences of the ancients, necromancy and magic, had, as will be observed, more or less connection with the phenomena of magnetism of the present day. Meantime necromancy resembled modern spiritualism, toward which the researches of present day magnetizers tend. The necromancers invoked the souls of the dead to know the future and the secrets of the present. The Jews pursued this study with much ardor, notwithstanding the prohibition of Moses, who wished them not _to speak to wood_. We know that the Pythoness (_witch_) of Endor evoked the spirit of Samuel before Saul on the eve of battle and predicted the King’s death. The grotto where this celebrated medium lived still exists, and she receives, it is said, the travelers who visit her from far and wide near Mount Tabor.

Magic was also known by the High Priests in Pharaoh’s court. Like the Magi of Medea and Chaldea they invoked the spirits and supernatural powers by methods and ceremonies consisting principally of gestures and songs.

Hermes Trismegistus, whom the Alchemists regard as their master, spread the science of occult magic. Following him we see the mystical doctrines of the Orient flourish at Alexandria with the founders of neoplatonism. These taught that the _Goetie_ was the supernatural art which is practiced by the aid of wicked spirits, that the _Magie_ produced mysterious manifestations with the assistance of material demons and superior spirits; that the _Pharmacists_ controlled spirits by means of philters and elixirs.

In Greece and in Italy the celestial genii were believed in, and they multiplied to infinity, peopling the Olympus of Polytheism. Priests profited by the superstitious idea of the people who invoked the aid of the witches and sibyls who derived their wisdom from the Magi of the Orient. Following the example, the historians, philosophers and poets were apparently led to the belief in all the Genii, in the power of spirits and their intimate relations with men through the medium of seers, in a condition of frenzy or somnambulism (trance).

We know that the poet Hesiodus in his theogony, that Plato, from the time of his initiation with the Hermetic doctrines, that Aristotle in his philosophical works, all admit the existence of immaterial beings interesting themselves in the affairs of humanity. The Pythagorians, on their side, affirmed their power of controlling demons by keeping themselves in constant meditation, abstinence and chastity.[50]

During all times of antiquity, there were corporations of priests, philosophers, theosophists, thaumaturgists and other sects, who exercised the trade of invoking spirits by conjuring them with charms, by enchantments and witchcraft, and changing by their aid the laws of nature, to command the elements and accomplish other extraordinary feats. In order to do these prodigies they had recourse to cabalistic formulæ, indicated in conjuring books, or by incantations, magical circles, or simply by magnetic power.

Simon of Samaria, Circe, Medea, Plotinus, Porphyrius, Jamblichus, and the famous Canidie, so justly cursed by Horace, belonged to this clan of magicians, gnostics, enchanters and mediums, who acquainted the people with the occult arts of the magi of Chaldea. It is only necessary to study history to be convinced of this fact.

Damis, the historian and pupil of Apollonius of Tyana, has left us the biography of his master, the most remarkable thaumaturgist of antiquity. It is in this work that he shows that while Apollonius was lecturing on philosophy at Ephesus, he stopped in the midst of his speech and cried out to the murderer who, at the same moment, assassinated Domitian at Rome, “Courage, Stephanus; kill the tyrant!” Apollonius had sojourned long in India, and all his disciples have attested the marvelous things he could do. He cured incurable diseases and made other miracles that astonished his contemporaries who were partisans, like himself, of the doctrines of Pythagoras.

Porphyrius published the fifty-four treatises of his master Plotinus, the illustrious neoplatonist, a work in which we find all the ideas of contemporaneous experimental psychology and a mystical philosophy supported on extasy, contemplation and hypnotism—ideas which were again enunciated one day by the enchanter Merlin, Albertus Magnus, Pic de la Mirandolle, Lulle, Cornelius Agrippa, Count Saint Germain, Joseph Balsamo, Robert Fludd, Richard Price and the _freres_ of _Rose Croix_.

But, before these, there were others who believed they preserved the mysterious secrets of nature, the Illuminati, the seers and others not our immediate ancestors; the Druids in the dark forests of Gaul, along with the Druidesses. Both classes belonged to the Sacerdotal order, and only received the vestures of their sacred ministry after twenty years consecrated to the study of astrology, laws of nature, medicine and the Kabbala. Their theodicy taught the existence of one God alone and the immateriality of the spirit, called after death to be reincarnated an indetermined number of times up to the point when perfection was obtained; when a new, more divine and happy distinction was achieved. It admitted as a principal religious dogma the ascendant metempsychosis, as in the case of the first magi and the great Greek philosophers; also a multitude of genii and superior spirits intermediate between the Divinity and mankind.

The _Druids_ were not only the priests, but dictators of Gaul; they were assisted in their functions by the _Eubages_, the soothsayers and sacrifices of their religion, by the _Bards_, the poets and heralds, and the _Brenns_, who participated in supreme power. Druidism was then an admixture of warlike ideas of the first inhabitants of Gaul, together with the doctrines imported by the Magii from Chaldea. So the Druids were the astronomers, physicians, surgeons, priests and lawgivers. The Druidesses, descendants of the Pythonesses and Sibyls of the Orient, spoke in oracles and predicted the future; their influence was considerable and often surpassed that of the Druid priests themselves, for they knew just as well how to use the Kabbala and magic; and besides, as virgins, consecrated depositaries of the secrets of God, they stood high in the eyes of the people. It is for this reason that the Druids and Druidesses were, under Roman domination, the defenders of national independence; but, forced to take refuge in dense forests far removed from the people, persecuted by the Romans, barbarians and Christians, they progressively became magicians, enchanters, prophets and charmers, condemned by the Councils and banished by civil authority.

It is at this epoch that evil spirits were noticed prowling around in the shadows of night and indulging in acts of obscene depravity. There were the _Gaurics_, beings the height of giants; the _Suleves_, beardless personages who were succubi, attacking travelers; and the _Dusiens_ were incubi, demons who deflowered young girls during their maiden slumbers.

Saint Augustin accorded his belief to all these fables, which were retailed throughout the country, affirming that we have no right to question the existence of these demons or libertine spirits, which make impure attacks on persons while asleep. (_Hanc assidue immunditiam et tentare et efficere_,—Saint Augustin, in his “City of God.”)

Decadence slowly ensued, so that in the seventh century Druidism disappeared, but the practice of magic, occult art, and the mysterious science of spirits were transmitted from generation to generation, but lessened in losing the philosophic character of ancient times. In a word, magic became sorcery, and its adepts were no longer recruited save in the infamous and ignorant classes of society. The adoration of nature and God, the immortality of the soul, the grand ceremonies held at the foot of gigantic oak trees, gave way to hideous demons, gross superstitions, witchcraft, and the most immoral abberations. Occultism still subjugated the masses, but the science had fallen into the hands of the profane and of charlatans.

THE THEOLOGIANS AND DEMONOLOGICAL JUDGES.

Magic, or the science of magic, then served as a basis, as we have said before, for mythology and legends and was noticeable in the dogmas of all religions, for, as Saint Augustin observes, “In order to penetrate the mystical senses of fictions and allegories, and the parables contained in sacred history, it is necessary to be versed in the study of occult science, of which numerals make part.”[51]

But from the Greek dæmon, or the _Sapiens_ of Plato, Christianity made a demon, a fallen angel, who wished to people his empire with the souls of the unbaptized; he is borrowed from the Jews with Beelzebub, Asmodeus, Satan, and their numerous colleagues. After Jesus, who was tempted by the Devil, and who delivered those possessed by devils, we see the apostles and saints visited in turn by the angels of God and also by spirits of evil, who fight battles among spiritual armies. These are only visions, apparitions of angels or demons who are vanquished before the anointed of the Lord.

Mankind wished to participate in the honors and emotions of communicating with supernatural beings; it is for this purpose that humanity addressed magicians and practitioners of Occultism. So we see in the first ages of Christianity the Bishops were uneasy in regard to magicians by reason of the popularity of the latter, notwithstanding the peasantry had submitted to the dogmas of the Church.

Paul Lacroix, the learned bibliophile, cites as the most ancient monument made mention of in this connection, an aggregation of shadowy women collected for a mysterious purpose, who devoted themselves to making magical incantations; this fragment is gathered from the Canons of a Council which, he thinks, was held before the time of Charlemagne. It treats of aerial flights that these sorcerers made, or thought they made, in company with Diana and Herodias, _i.e._, “_Illiud etiam non est omitendum quod quædam sceleratæ mulieres, retro post Satanam conversæ, demonum illusionibus et phantasmatibus seductæ, credunt et profitentur se nocturnis horis, cum Diana, dea paganorum, vel cum Herodiate et innumera multitudine mulierum, equitare super quasdam bestias, et multarum terrarum spacia intempestæ noctis silentio pertransire ejusque jussionibus velut dominæ obedire, et certis noctibus ad ejus servitium evocari_.”[52]

Which, being freely translated, reads: “We must not forget that impious women devoted to Satan, were seduced by apparitions, demons and phantoms, and avowed that during the night they rode on fantastic beasts along with Diana, a Pagan goddess, or Herodias and an innumberable throng of women. They pretended to traverse immense space in the silence of the night, obeying the orders of the two demon-women as those of a sovereign, being called into their service on certain given occasions.”